Software
Q. What PC based arcade front ends are supported?
A. CoinOPS, HyperSpin, Big Box, LaunchBox, Game Ex, Game Ex Aracade, Mala, and Maximus Arcade have been tested. Follow this setup guide to install and configure the Pixelcade software for your arcade front end.
Q. What Raspberry Pi front end is supported?
A. RetroPie on a Raspberry Pi 3B and 3B+ is supported https://retropie.org.uk/download/ . Support for Raspberry Pi 4 is not available at this time and will become available shortly after RetroPie officially supports the Raspberry Pi 4.
A. Should I use Pixelcade with a PC or Raspberry Pi?
Q. It really depends on which games and emulators you want to play. A PC will be able to play more games and emulators including virtual pinball. Pixelcade doubles as a Pinball DMD (Dot Matrix Display) which is quite a nice experience that is only available for the PC.
Q. Can Pixelcade double as a PinDMD (Pinball Dot Matrix Display).
A. Yes, PinDMD setup guide here ==> https://pixelcade.org/pindmd-guide/
Artwork
Q. Can I use the existing logo files already present in my arcade front end?
A. Technically you could but for the majority, the results won't look good on Pixelcade's 128x32 display. For best results, the logo should be resized to 128x32 and stray pixels cleaned up. This has been done manually (very time consuming) for the majority of the popular/iconic MAME games. Here's an example video of the manual process.
Automation is possible too via a Photoshop action that resizes to 128x32, adds a black background, and increases contrast 10x. The automation technique won't provide as good of results however but is much faster.
Q. How much artwork is available and what emulators are covered?
A. Most of the popular MAME games have pixel perfect artwork, you can see them here. See the mame folder, most of that artwork was created manually vs. the nes folder for example which was created using the automation method. Also see the console folder which shows the current emulators with artwork.
Q. What happens if I select a game which does not have corresponding artwork.
A. A generic console / emulator image will instead be displayed.
Q. How do I add my own artwork?
Q. How can I change the default console images and add new emulators
A. https://pixelcade.org/customizing/
Mounting
Q. What Pixelcade size should I get and how do I mount in my arcade cabinet?
A. https://pixelcade.org/mounting/
Q. Do you make custom mounts?
A. Yes, we can design a custom mount for an additional $100 USD and will need the outer and inner dimensions per https://pixelcade.org/mounting/ . If we have an existing mount designed that will fit your cab (check here), you can use the existing open source files and have them laser cut yourself or we can do it for an additional $60 USD. We use an external laser cutting service which has a 2 week lead time.
Hi Jefferson, HUB75 panels vary by manufacturer and we know for sure many panels are not compatible with Pixelcade so we don't recommend using third party panels as in many cases , they do not work. Shipping to Brazil is probably around $80 to $100 USD, would need to check though to get the exact number.
I have been able to set up my Pixelcade following the instructions for Launchbox/Bigbox for Arcade and also set up my Pixelcade for use as an external DMD for Pinball, but I haven't been able to find directions or documentation on how to configure Launchbox/Bigbox to work with both instances turning them off and on with scripts. It is mentioned a scripts folder with samples, but I don't know where that is located. Is there documentation or a demo video on how to makes this a reality
we haven't done this for LB/BB as of yet but as long as LB/BB has a way to launch a command before launching a game/front end, then it's doable and you'd just follow the same approach that we did for pinup popper which is documented here https://pixelcade.org/pindmd-guide/
so when pinball is launched, you'd need to kill pixelweb.exe and launch the respective listener depending on the pinball front end (note that visual pinball x runs off a dll so no listener is needed there)
then once pinball is done and you go back to arcade mode, kill the respective pinball listener and launch pixelweb.exe